


you were my saviour in my time of need

by bardtothebone



Category: Leverage
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s03e15 The Big Bang Job, Gen, M/M, One Shot, both gen and m/m because it depends how you read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5797861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardtothebone/pseuds/bardtothebone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not my characters, just playing. A look at Eliot during the pool scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were my saviour in my time of need

_Damien Moreau_.

It was a name that struck fear into the hearts of those who heard it, even more than _Eliot Spencer_.

It was power laced with menace, a threat and a dart in the dark, a grinning maw dripping with blood reaching out with wealth-laced claws. A name Eliot stood behind for years. A name he helped create.

He worked _for_ Damien Moreau, he worked _with_ Damien Moreau, he shattered buildings and lives and blazed a fucking trail for Damien Moreau, he basked in the shadowed blaze of glory that was the aura of Damien Moreau.

It wasn’t just the luxury, he would try to explain years later. It wasn’t the recognition or even appreciation of his skills. It wasn’t—well, not just—the crinkled corners of approval, the wide smile that held a seed of genuine gem in it, not the shark-sharp reptilian snake smile Damien whipped out for others. It was the _power_ , sweet and sultry on his lips, dripping down his chin like honey, turning sour in the night and curling out tendrils to choke him with the sticky blood he had spilled.

That was when he knew it had gone wrong. When the shining dark path that had blazed out before him was too dark to see, when the power that had been so sweet turned to ash on his tongue, when he couldn’t summon up pride at Damien’s smile, shared intimate over bodies gone cold and streaked with gaping wounds. When being Damien’s leashed killer, his partner in crime—and _God_ , what a wickedly accurate turn of phrase, burning sharp in his mind like Damien’s smirk—only made him tired.

Surprise and puzzled hurt on a familiar—fine, he’ll say it, _loved_ —face, a finger jabbing in the air, prodding him despite the distance. Probing him, his intentions, around the paltry defense of the casual glass of whiskey. Common ploys at showing power were Damien’s tell, showed he was truly shaken by Eliot’s sudden reappearance. 

 _You work alone_.

A statement. A question. A declaration of possession, raw and binding despite the time apart.

Damien knew him, _knew him_ , down to the gore-soaked marrow of his bones, knew the intricate traceries of his being, the hollows in his chest, the scars in his flesh and breath.  They had shared so much, a rare and fragile trust binding them together with spider-whisper silk. A trust that meant all Damien needed was a raised eyebrow and Eliot would uncross his arms and go to work. A trust that meant no matter what Eliot did, _no matter what Eliot did_ , Damien would back him up—more than that, would praise him. A trust and mutual respect built on recognition of a master of other arts, a trust and a feeling of being _needed_ , _wanted_ , part of something that wasn’t only destruction that filled the growing, gnawing void inside of Eliot. 

Well, one of them, anyway. 

They had shared _so much_.

 _Things change_.

The last time he had willingly fired a gun was in Damien Moreau’s employ.

 

 

Hurt and longing of his own softening the sharp lines on his own face, belying the crossed arms and ready stance. _I can take you_ , his stance screamed to those surrounding. _I can take you all twice_. _Don’t make me_ , his expression begged. Damien’s charisma shimmered, beckoned. The seductive pull that he had been running from more than anything else, what he tried to shield his team from _more than anything else_. Cold-blooded killers he could handle in his sleep (and did, when the need demanded it). Kindness, for all its barbed intent and bloodied fine print, he was helpless against.

 _Don’t make me,_ wailed a small, distant part of him. _Don’t make me kill you, too._

 

 

Hardison’s gone, down in the pool, and his nerves are screeching at him to dive down after him, bring him back up to the surface. _It’s my job to keep you safe_. The rest of him is eagerly straining toward Damien, basking in that dark glow, whimpering like an excited puppy.

And this, _this_ , is what he feared the most, all this time. _This_ is why he tracked Moreau, telling himself it was just to avoid him. Because it would be so easy, _too goddamn easy_ , to slip back into it. To be welcomed back with open arms, step into a right-hand seat, rule and conquer and raze. The honey seductive drip of power, the taste that echoes in his limbs, fizzes in his veins, coats his tongue and mind and muscles after a particularly well-executed fight (during and after every fight he wins, if he’s honest with himself). Damien knows him, sure, but Eliot sure as hell knows Damien right back, knows the layers and the bitter core of him, knows the thread of venom and dread that laces through his past (shadowed hints, dropped in the quiet of night near a fire, drinks in hand. Eliot offers one up, turning the beer over and over in his hands— _I almost married her_ —and gets one back, confessed quietly over a glass of sherry— _I never thought I’d see her again, much less that I would have to have her killed when she found me again_ —the easy take-and-give that was so natural, so fluid, and always so imprinted with the hierarchy they pretended they ignored). And despite all that, despite everything Moreau has done, despite what Eliot has done _for_ Moreau, _with_ Moreau, in the service of Moreau’s ever-reaching web of lies and extortion and the sweet, addictive rush of _power_ and _invincibility_ that he still has never felt the like of, Eliot can’t help but be drawn back to this seething morass of evil. Because he belonged, for a time. And he could so easily belong again.

Feet braced, arms crossed, deep breaths, don’t let it show on your face, _show no weakness_ , Chapman and the others like greedy little sharks, biting at him, nibbling at the edges, they always were, the jealous fuckers, he and Damien laughed themselves sick over it more nights than one—no, _Moreau_ , not Damien, never Damien again. Damien, who still resents him for leaving even though he pretends he doesn’t. Damien, who must be angry at the resentment, a feeding, writhing mass of blame looking for an outlet. Eliot can’t give him one.

_What else have you got?_

This, _this_ , is what he ran from. The invitation, the hope quivering under layers of showy carelessness and smirks, the naked longing buried in his eyes so deep that only Eliot knows where to find it. 

And God help him, for a single, frozen moment, he is tempted to take it. Not just the show of it, but to genuinely take it. Let Hardison drown, throw the earpiece after him, wreak glorious destruction and bring those who had not yet heard their names to their knees.

And then Damien’s gaze flickers down to where the pool is still frothing gently from Hardison’s incursion, and slightly, oh-so-slightly, disdain curls his lip and unholy glee glints in his eyes. He turns away, callous. And this, _this_ , is why Eliot left, he remembers abruptly. The empty nights come back, of half-empty bottles strewn across a room and silent sobs heaving a chest beneath cursedly dry eyes. The metallic smells of blood and guns too strong in his nostrils, too ever-present, souring the honeyed power until one night he had looked at his hands and seen only emptiness.

And Damien—no, _Moreau_ —had never quite understood that. Had watched with worry but confusion as the bags under Eliot’s eyes had grown, as Eliot’s hands—his skilled, precise hands, soaked in blood and steeped in ash that hid just out of sight—had shaken more and more and his hangovers had worsened, how his eyes became somehow both emptier and stormier, how his movements had taken on an edge of frustrated desperation, looking for a way _out out out_. Damien couldn’t fathom how the addictive, heady rush of sweet _power_ could ever turn sour, ashen, empty, _aching_. He could always do this, Moreau could: turn from the pain he had wrought with the nonchalance of the truly careless. And Eliot, once he had surfaced from the initial (albeit prolonged) immersion in Damie— _Moreau’s_ seductive weaving of belonging and appreciation, couldn’t. Can’t. 

His hand tightens on his bicep, brushes the scar from one of the bullets he’s taken for his team. For his _family_. And he knows what he has to do.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Within Temptation's "Angels," so also not mine


End file.
